(3)Tifa Lockheart vs (2)Mega Man X 2018
Ulti's Analysis This was one hell of a match and quite possibly the best of the entire contest with all of the meltdowns this caused, but for most of it you would just think we had a great match on our hands. Tifa and Mega Man X have a long history of being in the near elite club, with even debates of Noble Nine breaker status and whether or not X was at or above Classic's level. Having these two plus Luigi decide a division when all of them are at the same strength level was all kinds of awesome. When the match started, it lived up to the hype. It was a stone cold tie at the freeze. But then Mega Man X started taking off, relatively speaking for a close match anyways. 2 hours in the dude had a lead of 255, and despite some hiccups he trended up all the way until 11 and had a lead of almost 500 votes. This thing looked over, but the one trend Square still has is owning the dead zone. On top of that, Mega Man must have murdered a puppy and a firstborn son for every family in Europe or something, because everything related to that series collapses overnight and gets destroyed in Europe. I don't know if the games were never released there or what, and Tifa didn't exactly care. That 500 vote lead? Gone in a few hours and Tifa kept going up before the morning vote even came. She got the lead all the way up to 200, and then it was time to decide the morning vote, aaaaaaaaand... Mega Man X started taking it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Uw97lOOlk On top of that, a topic popped up on a Mega Man subreddit that quickly got over 1000 views. Not to be outdone, a similar topic popped up on the FF sub. This match was turning into a rally war, and if you look at the morning vote it looked like Mega Man had more rally power. Tifa's 200 vote lead? Under 100 by breakfast, but then something funny started happening. Once the lead got under 50, these two stayed stalled around that level for hours. It was awesome to watch, but Mega Man X would eventually and finally take the lead with less than 6 hours to go. He then started slowly building a lead up to 100, but Tifa had one final push left. I'll let Black Turtle explain what happened during the poll's final three hours. "As opposed to the wealth of personality that Tifa 'Tits McGee' Lockhart is known for? X has a pretty complicated struggle with pacifism versus the fact that the world needs him to fuck shit up every once and a while. Tifa has...... daddy issues? Also, 1pm now, the stalling will stop and X will begin to take off. Again, these trends are set in stone and were never in question." "I love how all the people that are supposedly 'anti-rally' have no problem harassing casual acquaintances on facebook to vote for their favourite jerk-off material on a 30 year old video game site" "Any match any Mega Man character has been in has been the same, strong out the gate, die overnight, recover around noon, run away with the match" "I mean, this post is one of the reasons MMX needs to win. The only way this supposed 'deep, well-endowed' character can win is by appealing to horny virgins on reddit. If that doesn't make ExTha think hard about why he's supporting Tifa, I don't know what will." "To be fair, the Tifa neckbeards on this site are posting on literal hentai websites to push this win. How can noone else see how sad this is?" "Unreal. MMX finally gets a decent draw, and he loses because of basement dwelling hentai fans." "I love how everyone that is anti-rally immediately turns around and starts cheering because someone is successfully rallying on a hentai board. Literally any person who has complained about rallies in the past that is supporting this is a hypocrite." "This contest is a fucking joke. Literal hentai perverts deciding a division final with Board 8's blessing. Guess rallying is okay if you can imagine having sex with the winner." "Even though we had people in the stats topic literally admitting to votestuffing, I don't remember the last time Allen ever actually interfered with a fraudulent contest result." "I'm not sure what the worst part of that match was: - Bullshit rallies - People posting on hentai websites making a difference in the match - ExTha praising bullshit rallies after years of complaining about rallies - ExTha taking credit for the rallies that happened when he wasn't even actively on the board - People defending ExTha's bullshit I think the one thing we can take away from that match, is that the board's biggest manchild is no longer Ulti." "Won't matter, the Pokemon furry community would make any close match a wash. Unless you have a fanbase of disgusting perverts to draw from, you won't win a close match on this site." "Let's be clear here, no matter your thoughts on rallies, or the characters in question, ExTha didn't do shit to affect the result. He didn't start posting here until well after the hentai rallies took effect" "At this point who fucking cares, yet another contest has been ruined by the rally crew. Even with the registered voter bonus, these contests are impossible to run in 2018, with all the porno subreddits and shitty Twitch streamers that offer an endless pool of votes for the degenerates on Board 8 like ExTha and Leon." "ExTha, literally the loudest pervert/Tifa fanboi in this topic 2 WEEKS AGO was jumping down Ulti's throat for rallying in the Pokemon Trainer match. And half this topic was siding with him. For as big of an insufferable manchild Ulti is, at least his terrible opinions are somewhat consistant." I'm hot and cold on Black Turtle. Recently he's been a pretty cool dude and I unblocked him for it, but this was the mother of all meltdowns and I'm only quoting the worst stuff from the stats topic. This guy was all over the board whining for two days straight about this match, even though rallying has been an allowed and accepted part of these contests forever. For those who don't want to read that garbage (don't blame you), ExThaNemesis plus a few other people rallied hentai subreddits, of which there are a ton, and continued rallying the FF subreddit for Tifa. This got Tifa her final push and allowed Tifa to come back in the literal 23rd hour for the win. Both characters rallied, but Tifa had more pools to rally from. In a dead even match, that made the difference. Mega Man X probably wins this match otherwise, but that, as Chris Berman would say, is why they play the games. I am pro rallying and I'm completely cool with what happened. Everyone knows my position on this. I will say though that Black Turtle halfway makes a fair point. If you're into hentai because you can't get women in real life, you are an indefensible pervert and will probably show up on an incel forum at some point. Thankfully, Tifa wasn't rallied for that reason. I know ExTha personally. Cool dude. He didn't rally because of hentai love. Far from it. He just wanted Tifa to win. Fair enough. I'm cool with it. Nothing was stopping Mega Man X from rallying everywhere either, you know. The issue is ExTha is famously anti-rallying and was quoted all over the contest when Undertale was running wild. To this day, him and MYC's bitching are credit for Undertale actually winning that contest, because nothing pisses off a fanbase more than people complaining about the thing they like without knowing anything about it. I don't do double standards. You're either for rallying or against it. You don't get to only favor rallying when it benefits a character or game you like. Anyone who picks and chooses is a hypocrite and a punk. If you like rallying, cool. If not, cool. But you get ONE standard. Don't behave like a politician. Pick one standard and stick with it. Picking and choosing is dumb and doesn't fool anyone. There are a lot of people on this forum who pick and choose, and seeing grown men without the nuts to stick up for what they believe in is embarrassing as a man. If you don't agree, go buy a pair of John Kerry/Mitt Romney flip-flops and buzz off: http://jonathon.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/john-kerry-flip-flops.jpg Safer777's Analysis If the previous match was boring this is the best match of the contest so far. Look at the result! At the 5 minute mark there was a tie! But after that MMX started gaining and we thought that was it. Tifa cut somewhat but MMX was still ahead. Oh well. Eventually MMX was ahead by around 450 votes so that means in this contest this wasn't possible to beat without rallies. Or was it? But after USA gone to sleep Tifa begun fighting back. As you know Americans really like Nintendo so of course MMX had a huge lead there. Okay MMX isn't pure Nintendo but he started there. So since we Europeans know better of course we supported Tifa, duh. Also MM games and characters do REALLY BAD in Europe. Personally I didn't know MM before I heard him on these contests. So Tifa begun cutting and cutting. And she went ahead! She was winning with 2 votes for 2 straight updates!!! Then Tifa used a Limit Break I guess and she begun pulling. She was ahead with around 195 votes then MMX used his special oves(haven't played the games, don't know what he uses!) and he begun cutting. After some hours he was ahead with like 8 votes! And he begun gaining again! He picked with around 90 votes! The Tifa used her Ultimate Limit Break and started fighting back! She begun cutting and eventually there was a TIE! Then Tifa ahead with 16 votes and then another TIE! Damn! Then Tifa ahead with like 1 vote! With less than 1 hour for the match to end! And she finally managed to win with around 115 votes! Phew! So what saved Tifa? PORN! Of course! I am serious! Porn man! Someone posted a rally on Hentai sub reddit and this gave her the final push to win! Man porn saves the day again! I think MMX had a rally too but you can't win over porn! So yeah awesome match. Also it is in top 10 of the closest matches. But man! MMX fought bravely but he can't defeat the porn! Nobody can! So yeah even though MMX won easily in USA with more than 53% he lost. So yeah. Man these kind of matches are why I like contests. I had MMX on my bracket but I didn't care! Still awesome match. Wish I was there in the last few hours but I am from Europe so I can't. Still even with this match beeing so close we can't even fill 2 stats topics? Man things have changed a lot. In the old days with stupid matches we were fililng stats topics like crazy! Still as I said so many times amazing match. I think also the user that posted the first reddit porn rally is called Kiraamaya or something like that? That is his Reddit name at least. Others followed of course. So after this match ended there was an uproar with rallies. Others were supporting them, others don't, others supported rallies only for their favorite characters, the usual stuff. As I said before I am all for rallies, for good or bad characters. Rallies make things exciting! Tsunami's Analysis For the second time in four matches, the registered vote was separated by single digits, in favor of the loser of the overall match. That said, this was probably the most hyped pre-Legends match, and with good reason. Both of these characters had already shown potential Noble Nine breaker power--Tifa directly, when she finished second in the main bracket X-Stats in 2006 with a near-upset of Samus (even with the Noble Nine getting beaten outright by outsiders more frequently, this is still the only time they've failed to break 50.5% in a 1v1 win against an outsider) and Mega Man X a bit more indirectly, to the point that it probably wouldn't even be brought up if he weren't Mega Man X. Namely, that X's percentage against Link in 2010 compares favorably to the original's 2004 percentage. And as of this point, he'd yet to be threatened by anything that you wouldn't immediately say "this is not a spot where Mega Man Classic would have lost". 2008, he wins his R1 fourpack outright and then finishes second to Mario twice before losing out to the combined strength of Link and Mario. Yes, he also lost to Zack Fair in that match, but given how close Zack got to Mario it's clear that Black-Haired Cloud was the beneficiary of some massive STF in that match. Come 2010, it's Link directly who took X down. 2011, if you want to count that, it was Mario/Bowser who took out X/Zero. And then in 2013, it was peak strength Draven. And even in that contest, X doesn't look horrible--because there was never any chance of either of them taking down the rallied Draven, X's battle for second place with Ryu is probably fairly organic, and X won that with 57.21%. Ryu might not be quite the dependable barometer of near-elite strength that he used to be, but he's still a strong character and that's a quality win. Also, games may not equal characters, but when we were finally given a gimmick-free Games Contest, one that wasn't intentionally balanced over the eras, Mega Man Classic got shut out while X still got his debut game in--and it did pretty damn good, almost breaking 45% in a loss to the heavily favored Final Fantasy X. This match had no true Guru favorite. Well, it did, because you can only take the match that's actually there, but it was a match in which both characters were picked by more Gurus to reach this match and lose than to win this match. How is that possible? Mewtwo. 49.375% of Gurus had MMX winning here and 50.625% had him losing (no one had him losing in the first two rounds)--but among the 70% of Gurus that had this exact match, he was favored 52.68%-47.32%; those who picked Mewtwo > Tifa, on the other hand, continued to pick Mewtwo here at a 59.57% rate. So Tifa was a heavy favorite over Mewtwo, MMX was a slight favorite over Tifa, but "Tifa/Mewtwo winner" was a slight favorite over MMX. (Or more accurately, "Tifa/Geno/GLaDOS/Mewtwo winner"--one Guru picked both R1 upsets and had GLaDOS > Geno in Round 2 and X > GLaDOS here) But now for the match. This one was deadlocked at 320-320 at the freeze, though X would ride a big third update to a triple-digit lead by the half-hour mark (even though Tifa had already managed her first update win by then). His lead would eventually peak at 469 at the 4:05 mark. At the 7:00 mark, Tifa won her eighth consecutive update, the first time either one had even won 5 straight since X's 7 in a row from 0:20-0:55. Tifa took her first post-freeze lead at the 9:40 mark and X promptly stalled the next one, but that zero-change update was Tifa's only update non-win for a period of just over an hour, from 9:05 to 10:10, which for this match qualified as huge momentum. She reeled off a bunch more after X's update win there, but stalled out in the 110s for a bit before recovering to eventually push it out to 194 at the 12:15 mark. Then X fought back and cut 100 off that deficit in the next 1:40. 45 minutes later, he took off 30 votes in a single update to cut it to 43, only for Tifa to take back 25 the very next update. The next time he got within 50 was met by two straight double-digit wins for Tifa, and when he got it below 20 at the 18:20 mark he was again met with a 22-vote update win for Tifa. Finally, at the 19:15 mark he took an update by 21 to take an 8-vote lead, skipping right over whatever she might have in store for being pushed down to single-digits,and kept up the momentum to a 66-vote lead 45 minutes later, then fought off Tifa's return push to expand the lead by another 23 over the next hour. But Tifa was not done yet. From that peak of 89 at the 20:50 mark, she quickly picked up a double-digit update win to close out the hour, then fought through a wall of single-digit wins for both sides over the next 1:20 to leave X's lead at the 22:20 mark at 52. That was when she made her move, pulling three double-digit wins in the next four updates to pull it back to dead even, then adding another on the next update--only for X to win the following one by the exact same amount, pulling it back to dead even with just 1:10 left in the match, and taking the next one by double digits as well. Entering the final hour, X led by a mere 8 votes, and it only took one update for Tifa to turn her single-digit deficit into a double-digit lead. X would win the next two updates to reduce Tifa's lead to a single vote with 45 minutes left in the match, but Tifa won all nine of the remaining updates, many by double-digits, to win by 114--the first triple-digit lead by either side in over 10 hours. In some ways, it could be seen as an anticlimactic ending--this match barely even makes the Top 25 list for closest final margins, and only does so at all because we don't count battles for placement among non-advancing competitors in 3- and 4-ways. During the final hours of this match, rallies were once again on everyone's minds. Some users, I don't remember who, decided to rally for Tifa on hentai sites, because why not? And since it ended up being such a close match, people blamed the rallies. Did they really make a difference? Maybe. There have always been rallies, though, and it's clear that there wasn't anything this contest on the scale of what Draven and Undertale did in 2013 and 2015. It livened up the contest a bit, and had people wondering what Zelda, Tifa, and Samus could do from here on out--but mostly Zelda and Samus, because Tifa's path was still largely set in stone. She beat Luigi long before hentai rallies were a thing, and she'd be facing Samus and then Sephiroth in the Legends bracket, two Noble Niners that she's already lost to multiple times. Her best chance at pulling some sort of crazy upset would be if Sephiroth managed to continue his historical dominance of Mario, but the consensus was that Mario would finally break through with a win against Seph. At any rate, while there had been some rallying involved, the unlikelihood of Tifa upsetting a Noble Niner this contest meant that the X ≈ Classic bandwagon would finally quiet. It wouldn't last. Category:2018 Contest Matches